Read Playing for Julia for Free Online

now for the bathroom…”
    He laughs when he sees the orange and purple.  “Whoever did this must have been on acid.   Totally fried brain.”
    Then he asks: “No bedrooms?”
    “One big room upstairs we have to share.”
    “Back to college days again —huh?”  He grins and raises an eyebrow.  “Okay, done with the house tour.  Let’s go.”
    He helps me into the frosty blue raincoat with the City of Paris label inside .  I found it at my new favorite thrift store on Mission Street.  I don’t think it’s going to rain, but it was my compromise with Ali: the coat covers up how short my dress is.  I can wrap it around my legs when I’m in his car.
    On our way out to the car he says:  “Like your dress.”
    How am I going to get through this evening?  This is going to be more than a few words exchanged on a boat, in a bookstore, or a bar.  My body is still humming.

Chapter Six
     
    The entrance to the Basque Hotel is on a dark, narrow street at the edge of Chinatown.  Austen parks the car nearby.  He drives a brand new black Mustang convertible with an 8 track sound system in it.  I am impressed.
    How did you find this place?”
    “I have my ways.” His arm is around my shoulders and he pulls me closer to him as we walk toward the modest entrance of a nondescript building.  I am beyond melted, but hope it doesn’t show.  “Let’s go have dinner, baby.”
    In the small hotel dining room we are immediately seated at one of three long tables. There are two seatings every evening and we are at the second one.  Rather ordinary plates, glasses, flatware and napkins are at every seat.  Food—it is real Basque food—is brought from the kitchen in big country bowls and the waiters serve everyone from them. Then the bowls are set on the tables and passed around, family style, for anyone who wants seconds.
    Austen tells me the hotel was established decades ago for Basque shepherds who were brought to America to tend sheep on California ranches. It was someplace to stay when they came into the city.  Someplace where they could talk to people in their own language.  Someplace they could feel at home in a foreign country.  And the hotel kitchen’s reputation simply spread.  Seating is always very limited; hotel guests have first priority.
    “So you got a job, did you?  Where are you working?”
    Oh good.  An ordinary question.  I am calming down.  It is beginning to feel like a normal dinner date with a normal guy—except when he touches me.
    “For a weekly newspaper called San Francisco Voices .”
    “I’ve seen it.  What do you do?”
    “Nothing very exciting.  I layout the pages—it’s like drawing a pattern to show where the editorial goes, where the ads go.  It’s a fun place to work.  I really like the people and getting to know everything going on in the city.”
    I take another bite of lamb stew.  It is delicious , but I am not sure what herbs have been used in it.  I will have to check out a recipe book about Basque cooking.
    “Does that guy I saw you with at the coffeehouse work there, too?
    “No.”
    What’s this?  A little jealousy.  Or more likely, simple curiosity. Or does he want me to know that he knows I saw him and pretended I didn’t. I have to turn this around.
    “Okay. My turn at Twenty Questions.  Where are you from originally?”
    “No-Where Texas,” he answers with a grin.
    “Oh yes.  Famous No-Where Texas.  Really.  Where are you from?”
    “A little town in Texas that no one has ever heard of.”
    “You don’t sound like a Texan.”
    “My mother is a teacher originally from up north and she did everything she could to keep my brothers and me from speaking like Texans.  It worked more or less.  And I’ve been away from there for a long time.  I think what was left of Texas in me got scrubbed off in L.A.”
    The waiters check to see if anyone else wants seconds and begin to clear the serving bowls.  15 minutes later people start